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Thursday, September 18, 2008

Fraud

The truth is, I feel a little like a fraud. Here I am with one healthy baby and one miscarriage. Those odds are 50/50.

When I look up miscarriage on the internet, I find thousands of stories of women who have had two, three, four miscarriages, and no healthy children. I feel guilty. Guilty for feeling as sad as I do that I lost this baby, and guilty for being in the same category as these other women who have had so much more sadness than I have. I can't even begin to comprehend the sadness of someone who has undergone fertility treatments and then miscarried. Their pain must be multiplied a hundred times over.

So I find myself apologetic about my miscarriage. When I tell people about it, I tend to say things like "you were so much further along" or "there was clearly something wrong with my baby" (this to a mom who had an incompetent cervix and lost a perfectly healthy baby at 5 months.) I'm not sure what it is that makes me do this. Not sure why I can't just allow myself to feel whatever I feel.

And the strangest thing is that I'm not even sure what I feel. I wanted this baby. I loved this baby. Do I cry when I think about it? Sometimes. Do I cry for no reason? Sometimes. Do I feel like the world is over? No. What's the "right" way to feel? Hmmm... that's a tough one, Dr. Freud.

I'm comforted by my beautiful son. I'm comforted by the thought of trying again. But will I still feel that same guilt? I'm scared that if I get pregnant right away that I'll be "out of the club" of women who have miscarriages. At the same time, I'm afraid I'll be the crazy pregnant woman who second-guesses every little thing about the pregnancy. Why am I not nauseous? Why do I have more energy? Will I hear the heartbeat at the ultrasound? Should I rent a Doppler so I can hear it every day? I should be enjoying the pregnancy in ignorant bliss, but that will be impossible now that a baby had been taken away. And the worst part is that not many people know about my miscarriage so they'll think I'm even MORE crazy when I worry. So do I tell them? Do I explain why? Or do I just suffer in silence with the guilt of "only" having one miscarriage? Having one miscarriage isn't that bad in comparison to lots of others, but I can tell you, it's not that great either. :(

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

a miscarriage is a miscarriage. Regardless of how many kids you might already have or how many miscarriages one might have, it's the same feeling each time. You are justified in your feelings of grief. You lost your baby. You lost hopes and dreams. You lost a part of you. Don't beat yourself up over this. Try to push out those feelings of guilt. No one with infertility issues and multiples miscarriages is going to fault you because we know the exact feeling that you are unfortunately working through, and it sucks. It's the worst experience in the world.

Anonymous said...

You still have the right to be sad about it even if it's "just one". One is more than enough.

And if it helps you to write letters to the baby you lost, then by all means do that. I have and still do.

Also, totally agree with everything yaya said.